As electronic communications (e.g., email, instant messaging, etc.) continue to become the standard of business and personal communications, the need for access control to such communications grows. Consider, for example, email, where the originator/sender has no control over where the email message and/or a document attached thereto may be sent (and resent) and who can access the content once it is distributed. Storing multiple documents in multiple places (for example, different email in-boxes) may put undue processing and storage capacity on both servers and networks. Existing solutions concentrate on sending the metadata associated with documents rather than providing access control. Moreover, under existing solutions, once a person has sent a document to another person, the only way an originator/sender may restrict who receives the document (by multiple forwarding) is through ‘prevent copying’ or other such feature that prohibits the resending of the document in its original form. Such an approach is very restrictive and places the burden on the electronic mail desktop client.